A tip I have for helping you cruise through the last (or first) months of school, is this little gem of a behaviour management strategy - Self Control Bubbles! You can find it FREE at TpT in the store of Lauren, a fellow Aussie seller! Click on the image below to find it!

The idea is that you blow some bubbles in front of your students and let them go crazy, popping them all over the place. And on a second turn, they must practice self control and not reach out to touch or play with the bubbles at all. SUCH a clever idea for getting kids to FEEL self control! I am going to use my mega bubble blower machine to get some serious bubble time!

I have made a fun "Bubbles of Self Control" take home note that you can award students in your class that are demonstrating good self control in the days after this lesson. Just click on the image below to grab it from Google Drive.

I love Write and Wipe Cards in my classroom! They make PERFECT center and small-group-rotation activities and they are always a HIT with my students!

They are also fabulous for FAST FINISHERS and really are a 'task card' equivalent for the Kinder and First Grade classroom!

I have just made some poster cards to help you create a center in your classroom. I like to have permanent corner of my room set up with Write'n'Wipe cards at the ready! Store them in a pocket chart, shoe organiser or in little plastic tubs. Include a tub of markers and cleaners and you are all set.

A good idea is to also include some clipboards, pencils and paper or worksheets. Ask students to RECORD some of the learning that took place on their cards BEFORE they WIPE it all away!

Write and Wipe cards can cover just about ANY skill or content area in your program! You can also prepare additional cards easily, by just laminating page from a textbook or worksheets. I did this in my first year of teaching, when my budget was minuscule!

You can use these posters to introduce and reinforce the procedures you would like your students to follow when they are in the Write'n'Wipe Center. I have also included BLANK versions of each poster, so you can create your own rules!

Write'n'Wipe is a great activity to teach your students INDEPENDENCE, so some basic rules will be a great addition to your classroom structure and management. It will help foster that independence that you are aiming for!

You can find the posters in my TpT store by clicking on the image below:

I like teaching a variety of paper craft skills in Kindergarten and 1st Grade. I blogged about paper tearing HERE.

Another essential skill is paper folding. Children need lots of practice (and a patient teacher or helper) with paper folding. Once your students have been shown a few times, they will love being able to apply this skill to a range of their own creative projects. Paper folding is such a great activity of fine motor development.

I developed a resource to help you implement a range of craft projects that utilise a paper folding technique called 'pleating'. You may also know it as the 'concertina fold'. Your students will create a series of parallel folds in alternate directions to create a pleated effect. This adds some depth to your creative projects and they look GREAT on the display wall!

To pleat, you need to teach your students to make a small fold at the bottom of the page.

Flip the paper, and fold again.

Keep flipping and folding, all the way up to the top...

And then open the page up to create a pleated panel of paper. They are used mostly in these projects as bodies or the main chuck of an object.

Here are a few of my favourite projects in my new 'Fold and Create" file. The file includes 26 projects - one for each letter of the alphabet.

A dog for the letter sound d....

a hive for the letter sound h.....

a nurse for n....

and a koala for k ....

As well as using a pleated piece of paper for these crafts, you could also use a paper bag...

or paper plate...

I would love you to try one for free! Find the templates for the koala (in Google Drive) by clicking on the image below:

I am joining in with some blogging friends on a HUGE hop filled with BRIGHT IDEAS!

Yes, you heard right! Bright and interesting ideas on a huge variety of topics for classrooms and teachers! Hop along the blogs in order, or use the Linky Map below to find something more specific that appeals to you!

My Bright Idea is to use your student's feet to help with a range of early mathematics concepts! This is perfect for early in the teaching year (Aussies are in their first full week of school for the week now). You can integrate it with a "Look at Me" unit and it will also help students learn about their friends in the classroom.

Ask all your students to trace both of their feet onto a nice bright piece of paper! Are these not the most beautiful looking, brand spanking new pair of school shoes you have ever seen?!

Once cut, use them to create a number line in your class. Do lots and lots of forward counting, backward counting, skip counting and numeral awareness activities with them. Students can place a matching number of tokens on each foot to match the numeral. Match each foot to a number flashcard. Turn some numbers over, and talk about the missing numbers in the sequence. Mix them up and have students put them back into counting order.

Spread them out, scattered on the floor. Students can hop from shoe to shoe, in number order, counting as they go.

Laminate some feet shapes, and stick them down on your classroom floor. When students come inside in the morning, they can stand on the shapes and say 'left' and 'right' to help consolidate their awareness of both sides of the body.

Ask students to measure their shoe shape. Once measured, ask them to find something in the classroom that is shorter, and something that is longer than their shoe. Get them to leave this on their desk, and then bring the object to sit next to the shoe to distinctly compare the two objects.

A great idea is to use counting cubes to make an interactive counting track for each of your students. Have a tub of these at the ready - they are PERFECT for a range of number activities and also measurement activities. Aussie friends, I got these counting cubes from Officeworks - and then stuck little sticker dots onto each.

Ask your students to compare their foot with another person in the class.

Ask them to find the area, with counting cubes, of their shoe shape.

Don't throw the feet away when you are done with all this math learning! Turn them into an artwork. Students can cut a circle for a head, a triangle for the body and then attach their traced-and-cut shoes and hands to create a nice artwork - again perfect for the beginning of the school year!

Thank you so much for stopping by friends! I hope you find a wonderful collection of ideas today as you hop around some wonderful educational blogs!

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